Six By Six, Cross The Styx
by el ma iubeste
Summary: Once every generation, the old gods chose their manteis - their eyes and ears on earth, who would tell their will and carry out their bidding. Only six of the old gods have continued this tradition to the modern day: Bylun, Enki, Sága, Tezcatlipoca, Cernunnos and Xi Shi. Now they have chosen their newest priests/priestesses, a group of mortal teenagers. SYOC, open! Please submit!


When I was young, Yiayia taught me how to coax the coal-black crows away from where they crowded along the balconies of the Upper East Side brownstones, and towards my hand so that I could stroke their knife-like beaks and watch their beady eyes flicker - it was a matter of patience and consistency and yet more patience, and I spent more hours than I could count cross-legged on the balcony floor, in the sunlight and in the rain, trying to call these birds towards me.

The first time one came close enough to me for me to touch its oily feathers and feel the tiny tremors of its heartbeat through its skeleton, Yiayia also taught me how to break its neck.

She had a sharp, silver knife that she kept under her bed, some kind of steel or iron, and she used this to disembowel the bird on a bamboo mat in her bedroom, kneeling over it so that she could read its entrails and the patterns of its blood as another might a novel. I stayed standing, leaning forward on my toes as though I threatened to take flight myself, craning to see what she saw, understand what she understood.

She and I both had the gift, but she was the gifted one.

It wasn't the first bird that told her, nor the second, nor the third, but one of the dozen birds she read that told her, that gave me my duty: they have chosen.

Once every generation, the old gods chose their manteis - their diviners, their speakers, their seers, those who would tell their will and carry out their bidding. Only the old gods, those who had been driven from this world, and only a few still carried on the practice, only those who had tthe strength to influence the minds of mortals. Only six of the old gods continued this tradition to the modern day, and, according to this bird's death, they had just chosen their newest mandeis.

Now I had to find them.

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Okay! This is my first ever Percy Jackson fanfic, so I decided to take it in a different direction from the other fanfics on this site. Six mortal teenagers have been chosen by six different gods to serve as their representatives on earth, their eyes, ears and voice - they receive visions of the future, they hear voices of the gods, they dream of these gods and their pasts. In this case, the six old gods are resentful of the power of the Greek and Roman deities and hope to overthrow them.

The six old gods are as follows:

**Bylun**,_ the White One_, the Slavic god of the light and the sun. His manteis tend to be idealistic and just.

**Enki** _the Fortieth_, the Babylonian god of mischief, water and creation. His manteis tend to be imaginative and intelligent.

**Sága**, _the Victorious_, the Norse goddess of loyalty and debt. Her manteis tend to be stubborn and confident.

**Tezcatlipoca**, _the Smoking Mirror_, an Aztec god of discord, magic and night. His manteis tend to be chaotic and cunning.

**Cernunnos**, _the Horned God_, the Celtic god of the wild and the hunt. His manteis tend to be strong and charismatic.

**Xi Shi**, _Lady of Sunshine and Rain_, a Chinese goddess of beauty and elegance. Her manteis tend to be poised and watchful.

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**Form, can also be found on my bio:**

**God for whom they are mandei:**

**Name: **Please make this suitable and realistic to their background- I don't want white Americans with Japanese names for no reason, or a girl called Ebony, or a guy called Odin, etc., etc.

**Nickname, if any:**

**Age, between fifteen and twenty:**

**Gender:**

**Birthdate, day and month:**

**Hometown:**

**Personality, no less than a paragraph:**

**Race:**

**Ethnicity:**

**Appearance, no less than a paragraph:**

**Height:**

**Weight:**

**Scars and causes of scars, if any:**

**Important Family Members and Relationships:**

**Important Friends and Relationships:**

**Fatal Flaw:**

**History:**

**Backpack essentials:**

**Skills:**

**Preferred Clothing Style (Casual, Athletic, Formal):**

**Preferred weapon:**

**Crushes/Love Interests:**

**What is their greatest dream?**

**What is their greatest fear?**

**What is their greatest strength?**

**What is their greatest weakness?**

**Theme Song(s):**

**Three quotes that they would say:**

**MOST IMPORTANT - Why does this god choose this character as their mandei?**

**Reaction to being chosen, their visions, etc.:**

**Other:**

* * *

Rules:

1\. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus will be accepted. Flaws are key!

2\. To prove you have read these rules, please include one of the names I used as an example of unsuitable naming above in the subject line of your PM.

3\. Put your character's name and species in your PM subject line. Example formatting: UNSUITABLE NAME - character name.

4\. Have fun!

5\. This is not on a first come first serve basis.


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